We wanted to help professionals who work in the field of mental health, social work, education, public policies and research to advance and develop these competencies which can help them to bring new effective strategies and practices into their work in order to make these processes more efficient for their clients, learners or communities they work with. In the globalized world where polarization is increasing, while democracies are threatened, and the war and the climatic changes oblige many human beings to migrate and to become refugee, in addition with the unfair distribution of resources and the growing of poverty, there is a need to face these challenges which affect all social levels from the planet level to the country and community level, the family and individual level. Sociopsychodrama as a method learns people who work with groups how to deal with all these issues and therefore is important to be available as a training to as many professionals who work with groups as possible. The main objective of this project was to contribute to the efforts of transforming conflicted communities and societies,healing traumas and building long term peace by increasing the competencies of the professionals, practitioners and trainers
Context behind us applying was that the COVID-19 world pandemic illustrated well enough just how mental health is relevant and integrated into each aspect of our body, mind and society and how much is it important for people to be in groups even when they cannot be. During long periods of lockdown in several countries, including the countries relevant for this project action, we have seen how human capacity for resilience and overcoming uncomfortable situations are important when a person is locked down in small spaces and faced with conflicts. The increase of violent conflicts within families and societies are telling us that we need to invest more in education on mental health care for professionals, and for the general population as well. Countries all over the world, including the countries of our origin, still rather heavily invest in militarisation than in education, health and social services. In general, mental health care is still focused rather on an individualistic approach and challenged by the need to integrate the body and mind in treating it all at once. However, the recent pandemic and recent war in Europe has shown us that we need to include the Social in the concept of mental health.